“Man, I have to make a phone call on the way home. I’ve been avoiding it for too long.”

He came up to me right after I finished speaking a group of guys last night. I’m a terrible judge of crowd size, but there were 50 or so men in the room.

Ranging in age from freshmen in college to 70+.

One of my best friends in the world organizes this dinner every year. Well he and one of my mentors. It’s called the Beefsteak Banquet.

Sliced beef tenderloin, fries, veggies, bread with a catch. No utensils. Everyone eats with their fingers.

I didn’t know this until I was invited to this dinner, but apparently in the mid-1800’s this used to be a common thing. A celebration. An excuse to get together.

I love that my buddies brought this back to life.

When I got the call, I was hooked at beefsteak. Let alone the opportunity to speak to these guys.

So late afternoon yesterday, I hopped in the car and drove the couple of hours to Columbia to eat steak with my fingers, drink a great glass of whiskey, smoke a cigar and share my story for 20 minutes to these men.

Boiled down to one sentence, here is what I shared with them:

We Need Each Other.

I think I scared the young guys with some of my drama, but I was virtually begging them to listen to me. To hear me. To believe me.

Because I remember sitting in their seat 10-15 years ago listening to some mid-30’s guy thinking — not my family, not my friends, not my marriage, not me.

But life happened over those 10-15 years. Friends got married and divorced. Kids were born and miscarried. Family got promoted and sick. Careers skyrocketed and crashed.

I told them that life is beautiful, precious, worth living fully but also that it’s so hard.

And that we need each other. Desperately.

I asked them to share part of their stories. Many of them strangers, but they felt the urge from the invitation to be authentic.

Hands went up when I asked who has struggled with depression, anxiety, aimlessness, addiction, fear, loneliness, disease, divorce, and a dozen more topics we avoid.

As I said, “my hunch is that outside of rooms like this one, you can go an entire week, month or year without being fully known. Without exposing what makes you sad or hurt. Without being authentic,” I realized quickly I wasn’t speaking to them, I was speaking to myself.

And hopefully I was facilitating a conversation.

A conversation that led to one man saying, “I have to make a phone call on the way home. I’ve been avoiding it too long.”

We were introduced by a colleague of mine, a former student of his. It was one of those introductions that you think, “how in the world did we not know each other before?”

He has four kids, we have five. His wife has started a new project, so has mine. We share big, dreamy, ambitious ideas. We live four or five minutes apart. Our lunch could have gone another hour or two easily.

He said one thing in particular that hasn’t escaped my mind. It has gripped me actually.

“Man, I’m playing with house money. What do I have to be afraid of? What do I have to fear?”

House money. In cards, people say this when they’ve won. Maybe not a ton but enough to not be worried about losing.

He got up and walked out of a hospital where he should have been pronounced dead. What could he possibly be scared of now? Beyond the gift of life he was given, he was given the gift of perspective. His beliefs and values giving him the ability to use this new chance for the benefit of others.

Again, it’s not my story, it’s his. And as dramatic and captivating as his is, all of us have the same story actually.

The circumstances vary widely of course, but we’re all playing with house money.

What would look different if we realized this? What would we start doing if we believed this? What would we stop doing?

Surely something right? Surely lots of things.

It may feel like the deck is completely stacked against you. Or that time is running out. Or that the chips are so far down there’s no chance.

We’ve all been there before, we’ll likely all be there again. Life certainly isn’t all roses. But what if we gave into this guy’s belief that we’re playing with house money? That we have nothing to fear?

Life likely hasn’t given you the exact cards you would have chosen, but if you’re reading this, you’re still in the game.

It’s a guy’s name that some of you KC people that read this will know. Some of my family actually know him well.

I’m sure he’s a great guy, but his name was a cuss word to me in high school. Here’s why.

At the end of nearly every football practice, our head coach would say, “Alright men, to the corner. Two Danny Days before we’re outta here.”

The legend goes that Danny, a former player at the same high school I attended, was infamous for going above and beyond with his conditioning. After the pads were taken off, the football dummies locked up and the players headed for the showers, Danny would sprint around the entire football field. Multiple times. By himself.

347 yards, or 1,039 feet, each time around.

Danny Day.

So when Coach would yell at us to run Danny Day’s, you see why that would be a cuss word to us. We’d already spent a couple hours working our tails off, only to cap it off with 1,000 foot sprints, the total number depending on his mood.

Brutal.

There’s a scene that’s permanently etched in my memory from one of those hot afternoons. We would run these cuss words in groups: receivers and defensive backs, running backs and linebackers, then the linemen.

Each group had a certain timeline we had to finish under or we’d run again. I honestly don’t recall the specifics but we had to hoof it.

The receivers, my group, would typically make it. The backs were pretty solid too. The linemen though struggled. For obvious reasons.

It was always a competitive thing, even if you finished under your time. One of my best friends, still to this day, was in the middle group. A hard-nosed fullback and linebacker.

He pushed himself so hard that on the last straightaway, I watched him vomit through his face-mask. Never one time stopping, in fact he was picking up speed.

That would have been memorable enough on its own, but what he did next is what’s stuck with me all this time.

The big fellas were the last group. My buddy caught his breath for a second as the early finishers of the linemen started rolling through.

All of a sudden, my buddy took off in a dead sprint again. Not around the field this time but across it. He headed straight for the back of the pack where a fellow teammate was barely hanging on, about to quit from exhaustion without finishing.

In a loving, yet firm way, he got right beside the final teammate. He hollered, encouraged, kept him going, wouldn’t let him quit.

It almost got to the point where he drug him across the final few steps. But they made it.

And the entire team was gathered at the finish line to watch it happen.

I knew it was special at the time, but I didn’t realize the depth of what I’d witnessed. How could I, I was a dumb high school kid.

But what a picture, huh? A guy who had already puked his guts out, sprinting back out into the trenches to be sure his teammate finished.

The physical exhaustion they both faced that afternoon is but a picture of the exhaustion we’ve all faced as we’ve stared at the challenges of life. Odds stacked against us, incredible suffering, terrible circumstances, hopeless and sleepless nights.

How do we keep moving forward, when everything in us wants to quit?

I’m not sure how you do it, but for me, it helps to keep putting one foot in front of the next while trusting that a loving but firm voice knows where I’m headed.

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Thanks for swinging by, I appreciate it. Looking forward to connecting and continuing the conversation about how love can impact your business. Send an email to justin@justinricklefs.com with any questions or comments.